The shortage of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills in the UK should be treated as a national crisis, according to experts in the field.

If the UK is to grow its space industry to the proposed £40 billion by 2030, a national effort has to be put into recruiting teachers trained in STEM subjects. Young people also need to be encouraged to study them, pro-vice chancellor/director of the Leicester Institute of Space and Earth Observation, Martin Barstrow said this week.

“We’ve failed miserably over 15 or 20 years. We’ve got to somehow see this as a national crisis and get people to work together on it,” Barstrow told a Westminster Business Forum about the future of the UK’s space industry post-Brexit. “We’re talking about growth in the space industry that we expect to achieve in the next decade or so and the numbers of people required to do that. That’s a lot of people; tens of thousands of people.”

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Projects like the Rosetta mission is hoped to encourage young people to study STEM subjects

Airbus

The number of physicists currently graduating each year across the UK is around 3,000. “It's not just about engineering, the space sector is interdisciplinary, engineering is important, but more and more we need physicists, mathematicians, geographers to deal with the data,” he explained. “Right now, there’s nowhere near enough.” This need will only increase as the economy continues to grow and different industries, like automotive and aerospace, compete to attract STEM workers. “Economic growth will place enormous demands on the STEM pipeline...and the space sector will see increasing competition”.

Barstrow was among nine speakers, most of whom also suggested the STEM skills shortage was the biggest threat to the growth of the industry even before Brexit. Following our split from the EU, this pool of skilled workers will become harder to access.

Richard Peckham, strategy and business development director at Airbus Defence and Space, told the forum that engaging people in STEM industries needs to start as early as primary school. “The country hasn’t been producing enough STEM graduates for years and they haven’t really been tackling it,” he said. “It will definitely impact the sector if we can’t get those skilled people. We do have a lot of EU people who work in the sector at the moment...and we’ll need much more homegrown talent."

Barstrow added that while it’s important young people are being skilled in these areas and teachers are being recruited, it can take a while before people start to flow through the system. “Can we encourage people to move from other areas of the economy by re-skilling them, continuing professional development in those industries? I know there are management shortages in the space industry particularly in those middle ranking age groups, people have dropped out and they’re not being replaced so there are huge challenges," he said, emphasising that "we’ve got to take a non-political approach to this."